He sounds just like my father.
My mother and my father went back to my mother's home country when she was 6 months pregnant with me...my father was a 'ten pound Pom'. My older brother was born in the UK, myself and my younger brother were both born in Australia.
We lived about 3 miles from my Grandmother and 3 uncles (uncles were my Grandmother's carers, they never left home). My Grandmother had been in poor health since before I was born.
As a family we used to see them usually one night at the weekend, we used to attend Mass at the church at the bottom of their street ...and also attended the attached private primary school. One of the uncles, once we were all in high school, started taking us to a shopping centre in the city on a Wednesday afternoon after school...he'd do his food shopping while we spent the pocket money he used to give us. All of us used to really look forward to Wednesday afternoons...he also occasionally took us to the cinema, zoo, museums, etc.
My father convinced my mother her family were interfering, were far too involved with us as a family....my mother fell for his bullshit hook, line and sinker. When I'd just turned 14 we came back to the UK...my mother lied to myself and my two brothers, told us were going to another country for my father's work...and didn't tell her family either. She was totally no contact with her family for 7 years after that. It only ended when my younger brother had turned 18 and my father had left my mother for another woman...
It was only when I became an adult and talked to partners, friends etc about their childhood experiences that I realised the amount of time we'd spent with my mother's family was totally normal. My father was jealous of my mother and her family, as he was estranged from his own family. Even after my father left our relationship with my mother's family never fully recovered, and my mother was left out of both my Grandmother's and uncles wills. Our two cousins inherited everything (very wealthy family).